“But these are the sort of people they choose for husbands,” the duchess answered gravely.

“Tell me,” asked the author, “is the disaster which threatens the husband in France quite inevitable?”

“It is,” replied the duchess, with a smile; “and the rage which certain women breathe out against those of their sex, whose unfortunate happiness it is to entertain a passion, proves what a burden to them is their chastity.  If it were not for fear of the devil, one would be Lais; another owes her virtue to the dryness of her selfish heart; a third to the silly behaviour of her first lover; another still—­”

The author checked this outpour of revelation by confiding to the two ladies his design for the work with which he had been haunted; they smiled and promised him their assistance.  The youngest, with an air of gaiety suggested one of the first chapters of the undertaking, by saying that she would take upon herself to prove mathematically that women who are entirely virtuous were creatures of reason.

When the author got home he said at once to his demon: 

“Come!  I am ready; let us sign the compact.”

But the demon never returned.

If the author has written here the biography of his book he has not acted on the prompting of fatuity.  He relates facts which may furnish material for the history of human thought, and will without doubt explain the work itself.  It may perhaps be important to certain anatomists of thought to be told that the soul is feminine.  Thus although the author made a resolution not to think about the book which he was forced to write, the book, nevertheless, was completed.  One page of it was found on the bed of a sick man, another on the sofa of a boudoir.  The glances of women when they turned in the mazes of a waltz flung to him some thoughts; a gesture or a word filled his disdainful brain with others.  On the day when he said to himself, “This work, which haunts me, shall be achieved,” everything vanished; and like the three Belgians, he drew forth a skeleton from the place over which he had bent to seize a treasure.

A mild, pale countenance took the place of the demon who had tempted me; it wore an engaging expression of kindliness; there were no sharp pointed arrows of criticism in its lineaments.  It seemed to deal more with words than with ideas, and shrank from noise and clamor.  It was perhaps the household genius of the honorable deputies who sit in the centre of the Chamber.

“Wouldn’t it be better,” it said, “to let things be as they are?  Are things so bad?  We ought to believe in marriage as we believe in the immortality of the soul; and you are certainly not making a book to advertise the happiness of marriage.  You will surely conclude that among a million of Parisian homes happiness is the exception.  You will find perhaps that there are many husbands disposed to abandon their wives to you; but there is not a single son who will abandon his mother.  Certain people who are hit by the views which you put forth will suspect your morals and will misrepresent your intentions.  In a word, in order to handle social sores, one ought to be a king, or a first consul at least.”